Humor of the Day: OCD...Only Certain Digits

I remember the day I diagnosed myself with OCD. I laughed about it that day and yesterday, my OCD brought yet another smile to my face.

My self diagnosis of OCD occurred one evening when I went to the Danbury mall with my friend Lisa and our kids (Lauren and Madison). Because Lisa thinks I am an irresponsible driver, she usually drives on our outings. On this particular night, Lisa stopped for gas, filled up the gas tank, got back in the car and drove away.

No sooner had she pulled out of the gas station and I said to her "why did you do that?" She replied "What?" I said "you bought $32.23 worth of gas." And her reply to that was "Yea..and?"

I was beyond horrified; I could not imagine why she didn't slowly pump the gas until the dollar amount read "32.25 --or optimally $32.50." As I told Lisa that night, I found it so "disturbing" that she would just leave the dollar amount on an odd number. Lisa, in turn, found my OCD tendencies equally odd - but laughable.

Yesterday, I was at All Sport (a place the seems to be a haven for humorous moments) and I was running on a treadmill next to another woman. At the end of her workout, I glanced at her treadmill and her vital stats were:

Time elapsed: 26:42
Miles: 1.91
Calories: 343

As she got off the treadmill, I wanted to say to her "NO, NO..COME BACK...YOU CAN'T LEAVE THE TREADMILL WITH THOSE NUMBERS ON IT." Was she crazy? At the very least, she needed to come back and round the mileage up to an even 2.0. I found myself staring at her numbers and thinking "how could she do that?" and then I laughed. Because I realized that she was not crazy at all; I was the crazy one. I was the one afflicted with OCD of the "Only Certain Digits" variety.

Evidently, I have a very complex set of internal rules about what numbers may/may not be left on the treadmill display (or gas tank). I tried explaining my rules to Lauren last night and it went something like this:

• Any number without trailing digits is good ($32.00, 2.0 miles)
• Any even or odd number followed by a digit that ends in "5" or "0" is good ($32.25, 3.30 miles)
• Any 2 or 3 digit number whose last digit is "5" or "0" is perfect (345 calories, 360 calories)

These are all number combinations that make sense to me or do not disturb me. Sometimes, if I am having a really lucky day, all the right numbers show up, in all the right places, at all the right times.

And that's what I consider a lucky day because there's nothing better than winning the "OCD Jackpot of the day" ....lol